"Bicyclist ahead" mobile app wins praise at TJROW

[Greenbelt]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recently recommended that all non-emergency use of cell-phones be prohibited while driving. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there were 32,885 highway fatalities in the U.S. in 2010, and over 2.2 million people injured. In that one year, traffic crashes killed 4,280 pedestrians and 618 cyclists. Of all the traffic deaths, at least 3,092 were related to distractions, such as distraction by dialing a cellular phone or texting and distraction by an outside person/event.

However, there may be an easier solution to the problem of distracted driving. On March 20, 2012, Proteus bikes in College Park MD unveiled a prototype mobile phone application that allows texting drivers to get an alert if there is a cyclist or pedestrian in their path. The new “TextSight” application for GPS-enabled smartphones will allow texting drivers to virtually “see” bicyclists and pedestrians, even when they are looking down at their phones. The product demos were done in conjunction with the Tim Johnson Ride on Washington, a benefit for Bikes Belong.

The app will be available for wide distribution on April 1, 2012.

[video=youtube_share;W4rPcna45y4]http://youtu.be/W4rPcna45y4[/video]

Topic

[Tim Kelley]

Great idea guys! I’ve tweeted this so hopefully this is an app that the whole DC area can really benefit from!

[CCrew]

This has April Fools all over it….

[PotomacCyclist]

I want the deflector shield/force field Android app! Or the anti-gravity iPhone app.

[PotomacCyclist]

Was that our “forum Ann” in the video? I see rhinestones on the bike helmet.

[dbb]

@PotomacCyclist 17419 wrote:

I want the deflector shield/force field Android app! Or the anti-gravity iPhone app.

Wouldn’t that impact the battery life (even more than normal)? Would likely be delayed until they develop dilithium crystal based batteries.

[Greenbelt]

Nice to see several news outlets picking this up:
http://greenbelt.patch.com/

http://greatergreaterwashington.org

[acc]

I don’t wanna die.:rolleyes:

[Arlingtonrider]

I ordered mine through Proteus this morning. It’s been so annoying to have to look up all the time when I’m texting from my bike. See you on the trails! Virtually.

Any plans for this to be made available through the iTunes app store?

UPDATE: This was posted on April Fool’s Day as a joke. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DO NOT TEXT while driving a car, and even more so, while riding a bike! Just dang foolish and dangerous!

[bikenurse]

Can’t wait to get mine. I’ll practically never have to look up when I’m driving (since I’m always texting). It’s so much easier than actually paying attention!

[pfunkallstar]

My friends and I actually had to come up with a new verb to describe the act of “almost dying because some jackass is noodling around on his blackberry” – we came up with “to thumbcake,” which properly describes the initial action “using one’s thumb” and the result “me pancaked on the street.” Feel free to off up any other neologisms that might be out there.

[Arlingtonrider]

Blackburied.

[Terpfan]

Seems like a smart idea to me.

Of course, I have noticed more folks texting while riding too recently. Literally watch a guy try to text while riding across the 14th St Bridge.

[PotomacCyclist]

@Arlingtonrider 17445 wrote:

Blackburied.

Interesting, except no one uses Blackberries these days. (At least none of the cool kids do.) BB is the Alta Vista or MySpace of the mobile phone world.

[Arlingtonrider]

Good point. Smartphoned just didn’t have the same ring to it.

[eminva]

@PotomacCyclist 17448 wrote:

Interesting, except no one uses Blackberries these days. (At least none of the cool kids do.) BB is the Alta Vista or MySpace of the mobile phone world.

Well, that may be true for the cool kids, but those of us handed devices by our old school employers still carry Blackberries. Which probably accounts for a lot of the Very Important Person Distracted Driving going on in the downtown DC area, at least.

Liz

[Author]

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